Customers of ALDI Mobile, now’s the time to take a seat before you read what we have to tell you.
Ready? Good.
ALDIMobile, which once looked like the still-shining beacon in the land of ever-decreasing mobile value, with its offerings on the unlimited plan slashed further still. Launching with unlimited voice minutes and SMS and 5GB of data for $35 value, it seems that the failure of ispOne (and by extension, Kogan Mobile) began to take its toll.
First, the data inclusion was cut in half — from 5GB down to just 2.5GB. Still, for $35 a month, this amount of data on top of unlimited calls and SMS was still fairly reasonable. Citing some research on its customers’ usage habits — where most were using less than 1GB — ALDI justified this drop in inclusion.
Fast forward just one month, and the razor has been out again. Now, ALDI has truly removed the unlimited part of the $35 plan, reducing it to (up to) 2500 minutes (which is still well over 40 hours talk time), 2000 SMS, 500 MMS, and 2.5GB of data.
It’s important to bear in mind that these restrictions (data aside) have — in effect — been around since September, when ALDI introduced the same restrictions on a rolling 30 day period basis. They’ve now formalised this into the plan inclusions, so we’re not looking at a change so much as a different way of advertising what’s already allowed.
From one perspective, this package still offers fairly good value. On the Telstra network, you won’t see anything approaching this value from anyone else (well, from Boost or Telstra, no one else really sells Telstra stuff anymore), and even compared with some of the prepaid offerings on other carriers, this still isn’t too bad.
However, the other perspective is that users who had a ripping good deal when the Unlimited plan was announced now have significantly less value. No doubt there’ll be a lot of vitriol aimed ALDI’s way following this change, but in a mobile market dominated by three gargantuan players, and with MVNOs (as ALDIMobile is) seemingly dropping like flies over the last twelve months, this really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Ausdroid’s partner WhistleOut has a comparison of other ‘unlimited’ mobile plans which you can check out if you’re looking to move around.
